IF PAT MET MY MOM FOR DINNER IN BOLIVIA

By Javier Palenque

My mother was born in 1936, the year Jesse Owens won four gold medals in Berlin, the year also the Spanish revolution started, Francisco Franco became the president of Spain, and the first TV broadcast of the BBC went on the air and the book “Gone with the Wind” was published. That was 86 years ago, in those days if you were genius-level smart and female, in most of the western world you were still a woman first. My mom is one of the smartest people I have met, born in a third-world country with all its old fashion cultures and traditions. To survive and succeed in that kind of environment you needed to be stern, direct, and sometimes borderline “tiger-like mom” back when I was a child. I clearly remember that early mornings she would come into my room and open the windows to let the air in at 6:00 am. Please consider that I was born in La Paz at 12,000 ft. above sea level, so it is cold every morning. Tough love and caring for others and helping was engrained in my mind since I was born. She would always say to me, “You are going to be ahead of the household, so toughen up! I will accept no excuses!

Last week the movie “Encanto” won as the best-animated film for 2022, it reflects the Hispanic culture of family, hard work, and traditions. Walt Disney (who owns ESPN) understands demographics and psychographics very well and they…